He ceased. Gravely, and in a solemn silence, he knelt again at the _prie-Dieu_. We rose. First Margaret, and then I, kissed the Prince's brooch and the folded hands, and then stole out of the room. We were too awe-stricken to speak, or even to look at each other, but, as we went, she placed her hand in mine. Weary days, full of hard riding and scouting, passed before I saw Margaret again. I was always in the rear, generally far in the rear, while she and the other ladies were, very properly, kept well ahead. She now rode in the calash with Lady Ogilvie,--the two being inseparable,--and Maclachlan was with them. My work was hard and anxious but it kept me from thinking overmuch. I put all my soul into it so that it should. "The lad does very well, as I told you he would," said the Colonel to Murray one night when I rode in to make my report. "I see no signs of my chance of breaking him," said his lordship grimly, but he would have me sup with him that night, and was very unbending and helpful. There is nothing I need say about this stage of the retreat. It was well managed, and is, I am told, a very creditable piece of soldiership. It does not belong to my story but to history, to which I leave it. Things did happen, however, that do concern me. The first was laughable though vexatious. This was the manner of it. While the Prince was making the stage from Macclesfield to Manchester, and Murray and the Colonel were in force a few miles in his rear, I had to keep the country behind them well observed. I had one patrol within sight of Macclesfield, and others stretching out along an edge of upland country running westward to the next main road. I spent the night in a little wayside ale-house, and was having my breakfast next morning when I was disturbed by a succession of yells from without. I ran into the yard and there was Donald, the rough head of one of my dragoons in each hand, banging them together, varying his bangs with kicks at any accessible spot, and shrieking at them in Gaelic, while they shrieked back and wriggled to escape. He stopped when he saw me, but still held them by the pow. "What's it all about, Donald?" I asked. "The loons! It's Glencoe 'erself sail hang 'em," he said breathlessly. "What for? Out with it, Donald!" "Yes, you gomeril"--shoving one of the men sprawling into the stable--"oot wi' it! Bring your tarn rogues wark 'ere!" The man came sheepishly out with my saddle, cut and ripped and gutted till it wasn't worth a sou. Strict and stern inquiry threw little light on the matter. I had my own suspicions, namely, of two licorous raffatags in the so-called Manchester regiment, whom I had handsomely kicked out of a roadside cottage where they were for behaving after their kind. They had been seen prowling about the curtilage of the ale-house the night before.